I think the correct claim is that very few people can hear 0.1% low order distortion on music.Markw4 said:
I will leave others to argue about ABX. I will simply say that I find it unsurprising that something which few people can hear in tests is also apparently inaudible to any particular person in a test no matter how fervently they believe they can hear it when no test is taking place.
What you meant to say is that, by picking approximately 1 second samples and listening with speakers with a very pronounced peak in the midband, you got better than chance results on one pass of testing, yet couldn't spot two identical files.
You could not replicate this on headphones with flat FR or by actually listening to the music. It's an outlier and possibly a useful diagnostic technique but I can see no use in terms of can we humans hear the difference when not cheating.
DF96, Agreed. I am thinking of what probably must be higher order distortion.
Bill, Right. But that was the most extreme case. I can't hear such small distortion normally, but I can hear something bracketed between that and .1% higher order THD in many cases during normal music listening. Also, I'm pretty sure there are people better at it than me, and they may hear low level distortion in more systems than I do.
Bill, Right. But that was the most extreme case. I can't hear such small distortion normally, but I can hear something bracketed between that and .1% higher order THD in many cases during normal music listening. Also, I'm pretty sure there are people better at it than me, and they may hear low level distortion in more systems than I do.
Markw4
I think that you missed much of the point that I was trying to make. Since THD is not meaningful, any test that uses it is not meaningful either. Until one has a metric that correlates well to perception no test like you suggest can be made that will have any relevant outcome. Hence all the tests that you are talking about have a meaningless result.
I think that you missed much of the point that I was trying to make. Since THD is not meaningful, any test that uses it is not meaningful either. Until one has a metric that correlates well to perception no test like you suggest can be made that will have any relevant outcome. Hence all the tests that you are talking about have a meaningless result.
How do you know that it is "higher order THD"? It is usually very difficult to find what the higher orders are and where they occur.
This would be interesting to me to experience and know the conditions etal.... can you describe or point to a paper which demonstrates this? Perhaps dealing with odd/even harmonics and/or masking?
Thx-RNMarsh
That's why I like my DiffMaker test, difficult as it can be to accomplish. It is the opposite - if the DM test leaves nothing audible, you can be sure there is no audible difference. If it leaves something audible, it might or might not mean anything you can hear otherwise, and is inconclusive.
'higher order THD' doesn't parse! High order harmonics are more easily detectable, that much is well known, but given that it's trivially easy these days to build amplifiers that have distortion below the residuals of any source from various designs published on here (and room noise for that matter), why isn't more focus given to the elephant in the room (the speakers). We are fixated on the wrong thing.
Many decades ago (4 or 5) I noticed only freq response and polar plots but no distortion plots. I called JBL and asked for the data on some of their drivers. I was told they didn't publish the distortion because there was no standard. Today we can measure all manner of characteristics of speakers including distortion. Yet, mfr still don't want to show distortion plots of their drivers. Usually because it is very high.
I recently bought a JBL M2 system because of the low distortion, high dynamic range and flat freq response together with controlled dispersion.
The M2 is a master piece of design and engineering. Takes care of that elephant in the room very nicely.
THx-RNMarsh
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I recently bought a JBL M2 system because of the low distortion, high dynamic range and flat freq response together with controlled dispersion.
The M2 is a master piece of design and engineering. Takes care of that elephant in the room very nicely.
THx-RNMarsh
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There are papers on this on my website. The ear doesn't know odd from even.
I don't follow "parse".
Yes, higher harmonic distortion products are easier to hear, but this sensitivity decreases with sound level because of masking. At high levels these harmonics are masked, but at low levels they are not. So one has to know where along the transfer characteristic path these orders are generated. That is not so easy to find.
Your amplifier comment does not mean anything as long as you are talking about THD levels (which I have to assume you are here,) because THD does not correlate to perception, so using it as a benchmark/metric/ruler is pointless. I have measured amplifiers that have very low THD plots, but high levels of very audible crossover distortion.
Speakers on the other hand almost never generate significant levels of higher order distortion, because they are mechanical systems and higher orders require higher forces. Since speakers are so so inefficient, high forces are hard to come by. Hence, the nonlinearities in loudspeakers tend to be insignificant - which is why smart companies like JBL don't publish them. They don't mean anything.
Because of consumer audio electronics marketing. They steer consumers to the direction that will make them spend more money.
We can all wring our hands about amplification minutia till we're all blue in the face, it is the speakers which has the final say.
The four basic components within Hi-Fi, the microphone, recorded media, amplification, speakers. Consider the microphone, in part, the opposite of the headphone, sound pressure against a diaphragm, converting sound to electrical signals...since the diaphragm is so small, signals can be very accurately tracked. Studio masters, processing and CDs' can record signals accurately (If they want to)...amplification can also be far far below human perceptions...but then we have the last in the chain, the loudspeaker, which has to take the high power electrical signals & re-convert them back into the sound pressure levels approaching that of the originals. By approaching, I mean their best guess...the original volume levels are likely artificial as "assembled" by the studio.
High electric power, high sound pressure power, by far the hardest task to do along the entire chain, transform one form of energy into another, and the most likely to add the highest amount of anomalies.
------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick.......
The four basic components within Hi-Fi, the microphone, recorded media, amplification, speakers. Consider the microphone, in part, the opposite of the headphone, sound pressure against a diaphragm, converting sound to electrical signals...since the diaphragm is so small, signals can be very accurately tracked. Studio masters, processing and CDs' can record signals accurately (If they want to)...amplification can also be far far below human perceptions...but then we have the last in the chain, the loudspeaker, which has to take the high power electrical signals & re-convert them back into the sound pressure levels approaching that of the originals. By approaching, I mean their best guess...the original volume levels are likely artificial as "assembled" by the studio.
High electric power, high sound pressure power, by far the hardest task to do along the entire chain, transform one form of energy into another, and the most likely to add the highest amount of anomalies.
------------------------------------------------------------------------Rick.......
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